London’s flagship UK festival, Wireless, celebrates its 19th anniversary in 2024. Owned by UK entertainment giant, Festival Republic, Finsbury Park’s Wireless festival is known for its annual bill of A-list performers. Back in 2005, Wireless festival began its 19-year run with features from New Order, MIA, and Moby. Since then, the event has become first and foremost, a hip-hop centric festival, with last year’s extravaganza securing major American rappers like Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, and Lil Yachty.
This year is no different from the last, seeing a star-studded selection of rappers from both sides of the Atlantic. Phase one of Wireless’ line up was announced today via the festival’s official Instagram. 2024’s event poster gives considerable weight to female rappers, both new and old. After exploding in popularity in 2022 after her single ‘Munch’, Bronx rapper, Ice Spice will be playing on the festival’s opening night alongside Trinidadian mega-star Nicki Minaj.
Known for her risqué lyrics, Up-and-coming Missourian rapper Sexyy Red will also be performing at Wireless. Finding her audience after Cardi B’s and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP created an industry niche for tongue-in-cheek, sexually charged, female-led, rap music, Sexxy Red capitalised on this sub-genre, finding success with her 2023 single ‘Pound Town’.
Saturday the 14th of July will see LA rapper and singer Doja Cat headline the night. After her breakout YouTube single ‘Mooo!’, which currently has 129m views, Doja Cat has continued to make a name for herself through a steady stream of popular releases and her outlandish costume designs. Off the back of her fourth studio album, Scarlet, released in November of last year, Doja Cat has secured herself a top spot at London’s biggest music festival.
Wireless’ Saturday will be host to British-born Atlanta rapper 21 Savage. 21 Savage became widely known after his 2016 feature on XXL Magazine’s freshman cypher alongside, then upcoming rappers, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, Kodak Black, and Denzel Curry. Since his 2016 breakout, 21 Savage has gone on to release three studio albums, as well as three collaborative albums with Offset, Metro Boomin, and Drake. Fellow Atlanta rapper, Future will also be performing on the event’s Friday show. Known for his pioneering contributions to the American trap scene, Future remains one of the biggest names in the genre.
Although the setlist features only a couple of UK artists so far, with Digga D and J Hus joining the line up, Festival Republic is yet to announce the full line up, the second phase of which will be released next week. Early bird tickets for the festival will go live on January 31st at 10am. For those with either a Three Mobile or Barclay Card rewards scheme, a special pre-sale is currently available until an hour before the general ticket sale date.
